Many U.S. troops serving overseas during the holidays

Members of the 455th Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron participate in a white elephant gift exchange Dec. 25, 2016 at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. The mission continued over the holiday, but service members took time to celebrate the holiday by talking with their families and spending time with their units. (UAir Force photo by Staff Sgt. Katherine Spessa)

It’s the holidays, and millions of Americans are making their way to visit family and friends.

Many of those travelers are military personnel returning home from their duty stations. But hundreds of thousands of military personnel will not be traveling. They will be continuing to protect the United States. And they are based around the globe.

Threats Don’t Take a Holiday

Many American service members must stay at their jobs, because threats don’t take a holiday.

According to the most recent statistics available at the Defense Manpower Data Center, there is about 1.3 million personnel on active duty, with about 476,000 in the Army; 323,000 Navy; 184,000 Marine Corps; 321,600 Air Force and 41,500 in the Coast Guard. There are 810,800 in the selected reserves.

Service members serve on all seven continents — there is one service member in Antarctica — and on all the seas. Military personnel is in more than 170 countries.

There are about 13,000 troops from all service branches in Afghanistan. They are working to train and advise Afghan forces and supply the fires needed to help defeat the Taliban and terror groups.